Artist Statement & Biography

Artist Statement

My intention in painting is simply to be a contributor of beauty to this world. I work to create images which express in form the subtle moods of nature, images which call forth the entire range of human emotional aliveness, which express perspectives that bring freshness to the familiar, which provide cultural access to normally unfelt sensitivities, and which chronicle the human spiritual journey.

To fulfill this intention, I work to achieve what I call following the beauty. The art of this, while actually painting, is to be in an active surrender to the constant (and often experimental) choices that arise. And then to sense when it is the perfect moment to stop. Like finding focus in a fog, to evoke with my medium just enough form, just enough definition, just enough Art to cause an embrace of the emotions or trigger original perception… whatever my styling or subject matter, it is for this I labor.

Biography

Born in 1948 as second child of eight, David Seacord was raised as a Protestant ‘preachers kid’ in small rural towns of the northwestern USA. Following collegiate years at the University of Oregon, he devoted most of his twenties (the 1970’s) to living in alternative/​spiritual communities, and world traveling as a young explorer of life.

In 1978 David was ordained a ‘Reverend Cherag’ by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916−2004), then Head of the Sufi Order of America, a faith-​path that honors the similar humanity-​unifying principles and ideals found in all the worlds major religions. Beyond ‘via his paintings’ he expresses his spirituality primarily through the practice of yoga, meditation, and conscious diet, plus speaking about The Love Declaration (which he authored in 1986/​www​.thelovedeclaration​.org), writing Everyman’s WEEKLY Journal (www​.everymansweekly​.blogspot​.com), and performing (and/​or recording) musically as a spiritual singer/​songwriter. Other officiating events (marriages, burials, guest speaker etc) are scheduled in response to invitations or requests.

In 1980 David established a successful business as a professional piano technician in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lived and worked for over a quarter century. Since discovering himself as a painter in 1999, he has shown his work throughout the United States to steadily increasing recognition. Currently situating his studio near his widowed mother’s home in the southwestern USA desert, he continues to become a increasingly noted artistic presence in the western USA.

A Letter from the Artist

I did not follow the normal path to becoming a professional painter. And while I did not go to any formal art school, I have felt since I was a youth that someday, I would be a painter. As a young man, I developed a deep attunement to nature by spending eleven wonderful summers employed as a US Forest Service Fire Lookout in several different highly isolated wilderness areas of Oregon and Idaho. There, alone in my seasonal hermitages, I expressed and developed my artistic creativity by sketching wilderness landscapes, photography, stone carving, playing my guitar, and doing extensive off-​trail exploring of the deep wilderness around me.

These summers formed the backbone of my inner connection to nature, and are an evident empowerment to my work as an artist now.

Eventually however, to meet the practical necessities of the world and make a living, I chose a musical direction and became a well-​trained professional piano tuner/​technician, fortuitously settling down and building a business in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From that base, I begin to meet many inspiring local visual artists.

The artistic influences of nationally known painters Eyvind Earle, Merrill Mahaffey, Julian Sibony, Christopher Lange, and Carolina Gentry all reached my life because I was first their piano tuner. They and many other lesser-​known artists would graciously take me into their studios after the tuning was done, and I would be ‘all questions’, their answers often staying with me to this day.

And as a well-​regarded piano technician making (over time) thousands of service calls throughout Northern New Mexico, I was given access to many wonderful private home art collections, the owners of which were almost unanimously delighted to explain to me numerous distinctions of their art appreciation. These experiences (plus decades of living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with all its art and cultural events, museums and galleries) made up my early ‘art’ training, and in time, opened the way for the painter within to emerge at the age of 50. From that moment, recognizing I had found another ‘life work’, I have never looked back. May you benefit from the results.